Hello everyone! After reading these forums and taking the advice of others for so long I feel I can finally contribute something. I have a 1986 Boatel houseboat which my wife and I purchased from Lake Powell a couple of years ago. We had the boat moved to a lake in New Mexico and have done a few things to make it ours. But of course with these older pontoon boats they leaked. I used to go out and pump the chambers every so often until one night a storm came through and filled up 3 of the chambers completely. We had the boat in Dry dock for a while and had just about given up trying to fix it until another post came up about this Houston based company called Tailored Spaces.
At first we had a welder fix what he could but as with steal it was creating more weak spots and cracks. I finally called these people only to find out they service our lake 4 to 5 times a year. Now with all the discussions on the web about foam in a pontoon I am now loving this stuff. The cost of $ 3300.00 to fill all the boat was a little hard to chew but I was amazed at this stuff. It turns out that it is what they call a closed-cell foam that was designed by the Coast Guard and is used for them on a boat called a cutter. The owner of the company we had install it was very knowledgable and said most of his business is Coast Guard stuff but has a route through various states when they are slow. Pretty amazing stuff though he first used a fiber optic camera to check the inside for problems before pumping and then used a strange gun to pump the foam in at around 400 degrees (it cured to the touch in less than 2 minutes). According to the company it doesn't add buoyancy but it did on our boat because it reshaped the pontoons to their original factory specs. It even popped a huge ding out of one that was their when we bought it. A year later were still floating higher than ever. I see him a few times a year at our lake pumping boats.
What a world of difference. He was able to expose cracks in the pontoons we didn't even know we had. I didn't even have them fixed. The pontoons are smack full of this stuff on the water for a year and no problems. They said it adds 3# for every 11 cuft. It didn't even budge our boat. I also read on the Coast Guard site after I had it done that it has something in it that prevents rust. And the best part it's a green friendly product. I found them thru their website at (EDITED OUT)
Happy Boating!
At first we had a welder fix what he could but as with steal it was creating more weak spots and cracks. I finally called these people only to find out they service our lake 4 to 5 times a year. Now with all the discussions on the web about foam in a pontoon I am now loving this stuff. The cost of $ 3300.00 to fill all the boat was a little hard to chew but I was amazed at this stuff. It turns out that it is what they call a closed-cell foam that was designed by the Coast Guard and is used for them on a boat called a cutter. The owner of the company we had install it was very knowledgable and said most of his business is Coast Guard stuff but has a route through various states when they are slow. Pretty amazing stuff though he first used a fiber optic camera to check the inside for problems before pumping and then used a strange gun to pump the foam in at around 400 degrees (it cured to the touch in less than 2 minutes). According to the company it doesn't add buoyancy but it did on our boat because it reshaped the pontoons to their original factory specs. It even popped a huge ding out of one that was their when we bought it. A year later were still floating higher than ever. I see him a few times a year at our lake pumping boats.
What a world of difference. He was able to expose cracks in the pontoons we didn't even know we had. I didn't even have them fixed. The pontoons are smack full of this stuff on the water for a year and no problems. They said it adds 3# for every 11 cuft. It didn't even budge our boat. I also read on the Coast Guard site after I had it done that it has something in it that prevents rust. And the best part it's a green friendly product. I found them thru their website at (EDITED OUT)
Happy Boating!
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